ile natives, it is difficult
for us to conceive. They suffered all the hardships it is possible to
imagine upon the sea, and for what? for fame, for glory? That their
names and achievements might be handed down to us; and this seems to
have been their only reward; for there was no Geographical Society's
medal in those days with its motto to spur them on.

Vlaming was the discoverer of the Swan River, upon which the seaport
town of Fremantle and the picturesque city of Perth, in Western
Australia, now stand. This river he discovered in 1697, and he was the
first who saw Dirk Hartog's tin plate.

Dampier's report of the regions he had visited caused him to be sent
out again in 1710 by the British Government, and upon his return, all
previous doubts, if any existed, as to the reality of the existence of
this continent, were dispelled, and the position of its western shores
was well established. Dampier discovered a beautiful flower of the pea
family known as the Clianthus Dampierii. In 1845 Captain Sturt found
the same flower on his Central Australian expedition, and it is now
generally known as Sturt's Desert Pea, but it is properly named in its
botanical classification, after its original discoverer.

After Dampier's discoveries, something like sixty years elapsed before
Cook appeared upon the scene, and it was not until his return to
England that practical results seemed likely to accrue to any nation
from the far-off land. I shall not recapitulate Cook's voyages; the
first fitted out by the British Government was made in 1768, but Cook
did not touch upon Australia's coast until two years later, when,
voyaging northwards along the eastern coast, he anchored at a spot he
called Botany Bay, from the brightness and abundance of the beautiful
wild flowers he found growing there. Here two natives attempted to
prevent his landing, although the boats were manned with forty men.
The natives threw stones and spears at the invaders, but nobody was
killed. At this remote and previously unvisited spot one of the crew
named Forby Sutherland, who had died on board the Endeavour, was
buried, his being the first white man's grave ever dug upon
Australia's shore; at least the first authenticated one--for might not
the remaining one of the two unfortunate convicts left by Pelsart have
dug a grave for his companion who was the first to die, no man
remaining to bury the survivor? Cook's route on this voyage was along
the eastern coast f